Guild Wars 2

When I first tried out the mesmer in the BWEs, I felt like Temporal Curtain was the only reason to use a focus. After countless hours doing dynamic events, dungeons, pvp matches and WvW battles, the focus has become my weapon of choice because of the #5 skill Phantasmal Warden.

In its untraited form, the Warden is a decent but not outstanding phantasm with an interesting effect. It stands in one place and starts swinging twin axes with wild abandon dealing decent damage and blocking projectiles for 6 seconds every 14 seconds. With the Warden’s Feedback and Phantasmal Haste traits applied, however, the Warden turns into a near constantly whirling death dealer that turns back projectiles onto the attacker.

Now it doesn’t have the raw damage output of a Berserker or Swordsman, but it’s useful in most situations, and wow does it shine in those moments you really need it. Is a ranger or thief peppering you while you try to defend a capture point? Call up a Warden and see how they like the taste of their own arrows. Need to bust up a pot of boiling oil in WvW? Send your Warden up there to hack away at that thing. Fighting dungeon mobs with insane ranged damage? Your Warden can shut them down so hard you’ll be off making dinner while being your dungeon team MvP.

How ridiculously overpowered the Warden is was made apparent when I finally started delving the depths of Arah. After dusting myself off from the nasty surprise that was the notorious Lupicus’ phase 2, I planted a few trusty Wardens around the room and our party cruised on through on easy mode. Not long after that, the next boss on the Mursaat path was a five minute exercise in standing around while Wardens took him to task.

Honestly, I think something has to give; it’s so powerful it’s really just trivialized some PvE encounters and dumbed down my play so I’m rather ambivalent about its future. Who else has thoughts on this trusty phantasm and its death dealing whirling axes?

from the “bugged abilities” stickied thread:

Minibiskit.6158:

Did some testing with the effect of Phantasmal Haste (trait X in Illusions line) on our phantasm’s attacks today.

Let me first explain my understanding of “20% less recharge rate”. The phantasms initiates their attack, the attack has a duration period, and then it ends. After the attack ends, the phantasm enters a “recharge period”. This recharge period is the time that gets shortened by Phantasmal Haste.

Here is what I gathered from testing, sorted into groups of “working better than intended”, “working as intended”, and “not working at all”.

WORKING BETTER THAN INTENDED:

Phantasmal Warden:
Attack channel: 6.0s
Recharge (no trait): 7.0s
Recharge (traited): ~1.5s

WORKING AS INTENDED:

Phantasmal Berserker:
Attack duration: ~0.5s
Recharge (no trait): 7.0s
Recharge (traited): ~5.5s

Phantasmal Warlock:
Attack duration: instant
Recharge (no trait): 7.0s
Recharge (traited): ~5.5s

Phantasmal Duelist:
Attack duration: 1.5s
Recharge (no trait): 7.0s
Recharge (traited): ~5.5s

Phantasmal Defender:
Attack Duration: melee
Recharge (no trait): ~5.0s
Recharge (traited): ~4.2s

NOT WORKING AT ALL:

Phantasmal Mage:
Attack duration: instant
Recharge (no trait): 7.0s
Recharge (traited): 7.0s

Phantasmal Swordsman:
Attack Duration: 0.5s
Recharge (no trait): 5.0s
Recharge (traited): 5.0s

Phantasmal Disenchanter:
Attack duration: instant
Recharge (no trait): 5.0s
Recharge (traited): 5.0s

In my eyes, it looks like the warden is bugged.

I disagree – I think the Warden is working as intended as it is not only a melee phantasm, but also totally static during an attack. I think the extra speed is to make up for the fact it can be quite easily AoE’d down unless you’ve also dropped a Chaos Storm on it for the Aegis boon, but even that only lasts a short duration and then it’s defenceless again.

The analysis cited is partially incorrect. The cooldowns for the attacks for all the phantasms seems to start at the beginning of the attack, not at the end.

Whatever the case may be on the skill’s intended behavior, there are cases that it does trivialize PvE content as the AI can’t recognize that there is a potentially permanent projectile block/reflect and AoE. Like I said, I love how powerful I feel when playing a focus mesmer; but when one skill completely circumvents a whole boss fight as in Arah, I believe some changes are warranted either to some PvE content or to the skill itself.

The thing that’s a bit annoying about the Warden is that it doesn’t actually appear for a second or two after the cast, so you waste a bit of potential Temporal Curtain on it (you can’t see its feet for a while).

Nretep.2564:

In my eyes, it looks like the warden is bugged.

If they touch any of that I can pretty much kiss the only good reason to bring a Mesmer into dungeons goodbye.

I was kinda hoping people would keep assuming the Duelist is somehow better and that nobody would ever find out how broken it is, but we all must wake up eventually. ;_;

Can we stop talking about it please? Everyone should go back to saying that the Mesmer is the wet noodle of PvE.

Also I lol’d at this part

Now it doesn’t have the raw damage output of a Berserker or Swordsman

I should amend that statement about the Warden not having as much damage output. What I meant to say is it’s easier to get the damage you want out of a Berserker or Swordsman because they put it out in one big packet and they’re done. The Warden, on the other hand, does its damage over six seconds while standing in one place, so sometimes you need to do a little work and snare your target or find the correct timing to make sure your Warden keeps chopping away on your foe.

In PvP, the difference becomes more pronounced as humans are much more adept than the AI at recognizing where not to stand and learn over time.

Also, concerning whether or not the skill is functioning as intended with Phantasmal Haste, this behavior has existed since at least the July BWE as far as I can remember, so I can’t see them simply glossing this over as a bug. I’m guessing they will probably reduce the effect Phantasmal Hastes has with the Warden to be more in line with other phantasms.

phantasmal warlock is best phantasm when you play with others. they do over 15k damages…..

they do over 15k damages…..

k